Shell - Get latest release from GitHub

get_latest_release.sh

get_latest_release() {
  curl --silent "https://api.github.com/repos/$1/releases/latest" | # Get latest release from GitHub api
    grep '"tag_name":' |                                            # Get tag line
    sed -E 's/.*"([^"]+)".*/\1/'                                    # Pluck JSON value
}

# Usage
# $ get_latest_release "creationix/nvm"
# v0.31.4

One-liner using only curl + grep:
curl --silent "https://api.github.com/repos/${REPO}/releases/latest" | grep -Po "(?<=\"tag_name\": \").*(?=\")"

For the gh-cli inclined:

gh release list --exclude-pre-releases --json tagName,isLatest --jq '.[] | select(.isLatest) | .tagName'